Tommy Warren

Tommy Warren lived a complex life. He was the first player with overseas combat experience in World War II to appear in a major-league baseball game.1 Known for his pitching skills, he could also swing the bat quite well. Prideful of his indigenous heritage, he would often be stereotypically referred to by the press as “the Indian” or “Wahoo Tommy.” He worked with children with disabilities in his free time. He was also so heavily addicted to gambling that it led him to stealing money from friends and, eventually, taking his own life.

Thomas Gentry Warren was born on July 5, 1917, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His mother, Maud Jones Warren, was of Muscogee (Creek) heritage. Most of the Muscogee people were forcibly moved from the Southeastern United States to Oklahoma with the passing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. This Act, better known as the “Trail of Tears,” saw the relocated peoples suffer from exposure, disease, and starvation during the journey to their newly designated Indian Territory.

Tommy’s mother and grandmother, Lydia Childers Madison, are both listed in the Dawes Rolls. These rolls, created by the US government to accept applications for tribal enrollment, are used in determining individuals’ degree of Indian blood. His grandmother is listed as full-blooded Muscogee, while his mother is listed as half-blood. Although the 1930 census lists Warren as “½ Creek Indian,” he would eventually write on his World War II draft card that he was “¼ Indian.”

Tommy’s father, Fay, was of Irish heritage. He played semipro baseball for many years in his hometown of Springfield, Missouri. Later he managed the Frisco Railroad team in Tulsa. Tommy was the team’s “bat boy, mascot and fly shagger.”2 Tommy and his younger brother, Larry, grew up without their mother around. Their father “pretty much raised them, and he worked on the railroad. He’d take off and would be gone for five or six days,” Tommy’s son said in a 2016 radio interview. “When they had to scrounge their own food, (Tommy) was particularly good at finding good, hard rocks off the railroad tracks, hitting something and (Larry) would club it to death, and they would take it home, skin in, and eat it.”3

Warren went to Central High School in Tulsa. He was an all-state athlete in football and basketball. Playing baseball as a pitcher, he was never beaten in three seasons.4

By 1936 Warren was playing for the Tulsa Safeways, a semipro team that made it to the finals of the state sandlot baseball tournament, sponsored by the Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman newspaper. 1937 saw him playing for the Texas Oil Co. baseball team. He also found time to play for the Sapulpa Gas softball team.

In 1938 Warren signed his first professional contract, to play for the Midland Cardinals of the Class-D West Texas-New Mexico League. In 24 games started, he went 13-11 with a 4.61 ERA. He was also used as a pinch-hitter and hit .228 in 101 at-bats.

The next season, Warren’s contract was assigned to the Abilene Apaches of the same league. In April, he “didn’t get the raise he thought should have been forthcoming and because he was under age, he demanded and obtained his release.”5 He then returned to semipro baseball with a team in Perry, Oklahoma, where he could make more money. Now known as a double threat because he could not only pitch but also hit well, he made the league all-star team as a utility player.6

Around this time, Warren went to play in the Denver Post Tournament for a team from Louisville. In one game, he smacked a pinch-hit grand slam that gave his team the victory. “‘It made me an outfielder for the rest of that tournament,’” he said.7

In 1941 Warren was still playing semipro baseball, with a team in Elk City, Oklahoma. Near the end of the season, Claude Jonnard, manager of the Amarillo Gold Sox in the West Texas-New Mexico League, brought Warren in to help his team get into the playoffs. He hit .321 while playing the outfield and also pitched two games, winning both.

Just as Warren’s baseball career was on the rise, Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. He enlisted in the Navy the next day. He told The Sporting News, “I wanted to get in because I knew my young brother, Larry, was on the aircraft carrier Saratoga, at Pearl Harbor.”8 On January 21, 1942, “he was informed that he qualified for a trade school, it was medical, but also, he qualified for the baseball.”9 He started practicing baseball again.

It was not long before Warren reconsidered his decision to play baseball. In a diary he kept during the war, he wrote: “Changed my mind at the last minute and decided to go to sea. Baseball manager doesn’t like it.”10 In the 2016 radio interview, Tommy’s son David said, “This is a man who could have sat there in a uniform and play baseball to entertain people. He was talented enough, and they wanted him to do that. But this Indian boy went to war.”11

Warren trained as a pharmacist’s mate at the Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Training Station, and later served on the battleship USS Texas. In October of 1942, he sailed on the Navy transport Elizabeth Stanton to support the US invasion of North Africa. He volunteered to go ashore with the Marines. Warren “tended to a wounded officer during the Battle of Casablanca, when a grenade landed in his foxhole. He covered the grenade with his helmet, and fell on it.” Warren’s medical records in the archives don’t mention any injury suffered in that battle, but a month later he fell off a 15-foot ladder while on active duty and suffered a serious head injury. That was the official reason for his return home.”12

Warren returned to the United States to recover and ended up spending 10 months at St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, New York. He was honorably discharged from the Navy in September 1943. Soon after, he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. This time he chose baseball over the military. “I’ve been in some hot spots, and served with a lot of the men who are fighting this war,” Warren told The Sporting News. “If I thought they wanted me to go into a defense job after getting my discharge, that is what I would do. But I know them, and I know how much they want baseball to go on. That is why I am doing my part to help the game carry through.”13

In March of 1944, Warren reported for Dodgers spring training at Bear Mountain, New York,  drawing a lot of attention to himself. He arrived wearing a pair of red leather cowboy boots. “He talks as fast and free as Dizzy Dean,” wrote J.G.T. Spink in The Sporting News. “To prove he can run, he has bet Branch Rickey, Jr. he can beat any Dodger in spring camp, to prove he can hit and pitch, he offers a scrapbook full of newspaper evidence that he has out-pitched Satchel Paige and has hit homers with the bases full.”14

While pitching during spring training, Warren did not give up a single earned run. He made a good impression on manager Leo Durocher. The Sporting News reported: “At the drills indoors over at West Point, Wahoo Tommy never rests. When he isn’t pitching to the hitters or hitting himself, he’s running footraces with the other players. Durocher thinks he can find a place for him on the club, perhaps not as a pitcher, but Warren would make a good replacement for Max Macon, as a pinch-hitter and part-time outfielder.”15

Warren did eventually earn a spot on the team, and made his major-league debut on Opening Day, April 18, 1944, against the Phillies in Philadelphia. He pitched the eighth inning, giving up no runs and one walk, in a 4-1 Dodgers loss. In doing so, he became the first player with overseas combat experience in World War II to appear in a major-league game.16

A couple of weeks later, on April 30, Warren had perhaps the worst pitching outing of his career. After four Dodgers pitchers gave up 11 runs in four innings to the New York Giants, Warren was called in to pitch the rest of the game. He proceeded to give up 15 runs in five innings pitched, including a three-run homer by Phil Weintraub, who finished the game with 11 RBIs, one shy of the single-game major-league record.

Shortly thereafter, Warren was sent down to the Montreal Royals of the Double-A17 International League. He played quite well there, posting a 7-2 record with a 1.83 ERA in 13 appearances. He quit the team in mid-June and tried to reenlist in the Navy. After some persuasion by Branch Rickey, general manager of the Dodgers, Warren was back in Montreal on July 2 and ready to play ball again.

On July 15, he was recalled by the Dodgers during the All-Star break. He had a pinch-hit infield single in the eighth inning, but the team lost to the Boston Braves, 6-3. On the 22nd he made his debut as a starting pitcher, against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He failed to get out of the first inning, giving up three runs and recording only one out.

By July 30, the Dodgers were in last place in the National League and were set to take on the first-place St. Louis Cardinals in a doubleheader. The Cardinals were red-hot, winning their last nine games. Warren got the nod to start game one. He pitched all nine innings, earning his first and only win, as the Dodgers won 10-4. He also helped himself at the plate, going 2-for-3 with a walk and a run scored. Warren was also called in to pitch in game two, getting out of a ninth-inning one-out, bases-loaded jam. He had a chance to win the game, but an 11th-inning throwing error by catcher Mickey Owen allowed Stan Musial to score, giving Warren the loss.

The Dodgers finished in seventh place in the National League in 1944. Warren’s final pitching stats were unimpressive: a 1-4 record with a 4.98 ERA. In 68⅔ innings pitched, he walked 40 batters while striking out 18. His ERA+ was 71. (100 is equivalent to the league average.) His batting stats were just as unremarkable: a .256 batting average with two RBIs and one run scored in 45 plate appearances. After the season, he was sent back down to Montreal.

The Montreal Royals finished first in the International League in 1945. Warren put up good numbers when batting, including a .330/.376/.564 slash line, but struggled on the mound. He ended up 9-7 with a 5.63 ERA. The Royals released him at the end of the season. Because of this, he missed out on being Jackie Robinson’s teammate by a year. Robinson played for the Royals in 1946, before making his debut with the Dodgers in 1947.

When not playing baseball, Warren lived in Tulsa and was a sheriff’s deputy. It was here while doing a publicity tour in an aircraft factory that he met his wife, Frances. Tommy Warren and Frances Hammond were married on May 11, 1945. Their only child, David, was born on July 13, 1947, in Tulsa.

No longer affiliated with the Dodgers, Warren ended up playing for the Tulsa Oilers of the Texas League from 1946 to 1948. He won 20 games with a 2.86 ERA in 1946 and 14 in 1947, but in 1948 he won only 6 games and was released after the season.

At this point in his life, Warren’s gambling problem started to cause problems in his personal life. His son David described life growing up as Tommy’s son: “He loved kids, not particularly me. He was beloved by my friends. He could be himself when he was with children, especially if there was a baseball involved. He tried to be a good father, the best he could be with what he knew, but there were problems. By the late ’40s he had a noticeable gambling problem and it really hurt his baseball career. The bad times were when he was on losing streaks and he would strike out. The only time he ever really beat me, he beat me so bad that blood ran down my legs and stained my tennis shoes and my socks. My mother broke the door open and laid a sawed-off 12 gauge on the back of his head and said, ‘Next time you touch him, I’m firing both barrels, and I will kill you.’ He never touched me again.”18

Early in 1949, while still a deputy sheriff, Warren set up a scheme to try to get money to pay off his gambling debts. He got friends, including Tulsa Sheriff George Blaine, to give him money to purchase new automobiles. He told them he knew someone in Detroit who could get the vehicles at wholesale cost. Warren never delivered the cars; the money was gambled away. When this finally caught up with him, he said, “Never did I have any thought of doing anything dishonest or taking a cent from my friends. I got in a jam, and when I got the money, I thought I would try it once again, hoping to recoup. But every time it went the same way.”19

In mid-February of 1949, Warren’s wife handed in his resignation to the sheriff’s department. She said he “left their home Saturday ‘acting like a wild man’ after losing a reported $7,200 on the Willie Pep-Sandy Sadler fight in New York and the Oklahoma A&M-University of Oklahoma basketball game Friday night.”20 Sheriff George Blaine was aware of Warren’s gambling problem for quite some time. “I told him he’d have to stop and he promised he would,” the sheriff said.21

For a while, after agreeing to help the police in exposing Tulsa’s gambling rackets, it looked as if Warren would get out of jail time. But on March 11, it was reported that four used-car dealers and a tavern owner planned to seek new charges against him. Ted Wilmot, president of the Tulsa Used Car Dealers Association, said, “We won’t be satisfied to see some judge slap Tommy on the wrist and say, ‘Poor Tommy, he did wrong, but he didn’t mean to,’ and then turn him loose. We want to see him put in jail where he can think about what he did to fellows who thought of him as a friend.”22

On May 4, 1949, Warren was found guilty of larceny by fraud and sentenced to three years in prison. He appealed the decision and posted bail. Knowing that there was too much bad publicity about him in the United States, Warren asked permission to go play baseball in Canada. His request was granted.

Warren wound up playing in Ontario for the Galt Terriers of the Intercounty Baseball League. His former teammate on the Dodgers, Goody Rosen, was a teammate. He started the season strong, getting the win in a 9-1 victory over the Guelph Maple Leafs. By June he was leading the league in both home runs and RBIs. In early August, Warren broke a bone in his foot while sliding into second base. After a couple of weeks off to recover, he was back in time to help his team win the pennant.

Controversy started as soon as the playoffs began. Warren and a few other veterans on the team had signed contracts that guaranteed them 10 percent of the gate for playoff games. Now, with the playoffs soon to start, they were demanding 25 percent of the gate. The team owner refused and eventually the whole thing seemed to blow over. In the fifth inning of the final game of the semifinals, against the Brantford Red Sox, a ball was hit between the shortstop, center fielder, and left fielder. Warren, playing left field, called off everyone and then hesitated and let the ball fall in front of him. Umpire Johnny Kumornik later said, “I could have caught that ball in my jockstrap. Warren was no bush leaguer, for chrissakes. He had been up in the majors. The bloody Indian had short-legged it.”23 To make matters worse, the day after the game Warren deposited a large sum of money in the local bank. The rumor among the other Galt players was that Warren had placed a large bet on the underdog Red Sox and then threw the game to collect on his bet.24

Warren returned to Tulsa and was still awaiting his appeal to be heard. Granted permission to once again leave the country, he played in the Venezuelan Winter League for the Sabios de Vargas team. The team was managed by Cuban hall of famer Pelayo Chacón and featured Negro League Hall of Famer Ray Brown. Warren played center field and sometimes pitched. The team did not do well, however, finishing with a record of 17-31.

In 1950, while Warren’s appeal was still being considered, he was once more granted permission to leave the country to play baseball. This time he played for the Sultanes de Monterrey in the Mexican League. The team finished three games out of first place.

In December of 1950, the Oklahoma State Criminal Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Warren. The court ruled that he should have been accused and tried on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses instead of larceny by fraud. While he awaited the new trial, Warren began the 1950 baseball season managing and playing for the Miami Eagles of the Class-D Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League.

In late June 1951, Warren was found guilty of obtaining money under false pretenses and sentenced to three years in prison. He appealed, was released after posting bond, and returned to the Eagles. On July 4 he pitched a no-hitter against the Iola Indians in the seven-inning opener of a doubleheader. Warren struck out nine batters and walked one. He then came on in relief in the second game, allowing just two hits in three innings of work. A few weeks later, he made the KOM League All-Star team as a reserve.

On February 15, 1952, Warren dropped his appeal. Explaining why, he said, “I want to start serving my sentence. I want to get this thing off my mind. I have a boy who will soon be five and I want this out of my life before he grows older and tragedy drapes around his shoulders.”25 Warren started serving his sentence in April.

While an inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Warren pitched and managed for the McAlester Outlaws. The Outlaws were a part of the prison’s competitive sports program, which Warden Jerome Walters, a retired Army colonel, thought was “a great thing for the prisoners.”26 Their baseball, “about a caliber of a Class C league,”27 was played both in and outside the confines of the prison walls. The convicts would play about 10 games a month during the season. Their opponents came from “Oklahoma college teams, the Class D Sooner State League and semi-pro outfits.”28 Traveling for a “road” game would leave the team at a disadvantage: “Two of its infielders have escape records and are forbidden to leave the gates.”29 Warren won at least 22 games on the mound30 and the Outlaws were invited to participate in the annual Oklahoma state sandlot baseball tournament. Warren made the sandlot all-star team as a pitcher.

On February 23, 1953, after serving 10½ months of a three-year sentence, Warren was granted parole. His baseball skills may have helped him get parole early: He had been offered a job with Temple of the Class-B Big State League. “Robert Conwell, manager of the Temple team, appeared before the board personally on Warren’s behalf,” a newspaper reported.31

After appearing in 42 games for the Temple Eagles, Warren was traded to the Corpus Christi Aces of the Class-B Gulf Coast League. The Aces struggled to a record of 61-83; Warren posted a record of 6-5 with a 3.62 ERA.

Warren was named player-manager of the Seminole Oilers in February of 1954. The Oilers, playing in the Class-D Sooner State League, were in financial distress. Even though Warren was 10-1 on the mound and hitting .298 as an outfielder, the team released him in June to save money. He quickly signed as player-manager with the Borger Gassers of the Class-C West Texas-New Mexico League. The team folded on July 17 and was taken over by the league. Warren was released to save money. By July 25, Warren signed with the Wichita Indians of the Class-A Western League. Finishing the season for the Indians with a 3-1 record and a 2.10 ERA, Warren finally found stable ground and continued to pitch for Wichita in 1955, his last season in Organized Baseball.

Warren played semipro ball around the Wichita area for the next two years. After finally retiring from baseball, he stayed close to the game by working with children with physical disabilities and young aspiring baseball players. He told a Canadian author, “[T]he late Bill Skelly of Skelly Oil Co. got me interested in the little ones in 1947 when he asked me to visit the Tulsa Children’s Home, and I have tried to work with them ever since.”32

But gambling was still a big part of Warren’s post-baseball life. His son, David, said, “After dad got out of baseball, he just had to have the gambling, and he had to have the big-time gambling, it had to be dangerous gambling. I remember that last year in 1967. I went to spend three months with him. [The gambling] was so serious that he wouldn’t have me in his apartment. He had me in another apartment because he was afraid something violent was going to happen. I didn’t see him again until Christmas that year. I was at my grandfather’s with my mother. They were divorced by this time, and my uncle was there. Normally, my dad would stay the whole time that (uncle) Benny was there, and he just came in, had dinner, and left, which was really strange. I knew something was really, really wrong.”33

Warren bet on three games on New Year’s Day. He lost all three and he didn’t have the money to pay off the bets. He checked into the Ramada Inn that same day. The next day, he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun. He left behind a short note, saying he intended on taking his life. He was 50 years old. He is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa.

In spite of his flaws, Warren made a positive impact in many people’s lives. His son, David, observed that “it wasn’t until my father’s funeral that I realized how much he was really loved by the people of Tulsa. I’ve got pictures of him taking kids in wheelchairs to the games and setting them on the field so they actually felt like they were part of it in their wheelchairs, and lean against the wall with their crutches. That funeral, it was unbelievable of all the people that were in wheelchairs. Those were the kids that he took to that field. He didn’t know that all those kids he took to the ballpark remembered him and cared.”34

Photo credit

Tommy Warren, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries

Notes

1 Gary Bedingfield, “Baseball in Wartime,” https://www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/warren_tommy.htm. Accessed August 16, 2022.

2 J.G.T. Spink, “Looping the Loops: Dodgers Casanova Cowboy,” The Sporting News, March 16, 1944: 14.

3 WBUR radio interview with David Warren, interviewed by Greg Echlin, May 21, 2016. Tommy Warren: A WWII Veteran Turned MLB Pitcher | Only A Game (wbur.org). Accessed August 16, 2022

4 “Tommy Warren, Former Gold Sox Star, Is Most Colorful Hopeful of Dodgers,” Amarillo (Texas) Globe-Times, March 31, 1944: 15.

5 Spink.

6 “Enid Fielder Is ‘Most Valuable’ of Semi-Pros,” Blackwell (Oklahoma) Daily Journal, July 23, 1939: 5.

7 Spink.

8 Spink.

9 WBUR interview.

10 WBUR interview.

11 WBUR interview.

12 WBUR interview.

13 Spink.

14 Spink.

15 Harold C. Burr, “Dodger Outlook Murky Without Arky, Says Lip,” The Sporting News, March 30, 1944: 4.

16 Bedingfield.

17 Double A in 1944 was the equivalent of today’s Triple A.

18 WBUR interview.

19 “Tulsan Admits Gaming Loses,” Miami (Oklahoma) News-Record, February 16, 1949: 1.

20 “Tommy Warren Is Expected Back in Tulsa Today,” Sapulpa (Oklahoma) Herald, February 16, 1949: 4.

21 “Tulsan Admits Gaming Loses.”

22 “Ex-Baseball Star Warren Faces Criminal Charges,” Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Examiner-Enterprise, March 11, 1949: 1.

23 David Menary, Terrier Town: Summer of ’49 (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003), 252.

24 Menary, 256.

25 “Tom Warren Asks to Start Prison Term,” Bartlesville Record, February 16, 1952: 1.

26 “There Is One Team Free from Holdouts ­– It’s from State Pen,” Oil City (Pennsylvania) Derrick, May 10, 1952: 10.

27 “There Is One Team Free from Holdouts – It’s from State Pen.”

28 “There Is One Team Free from Holdouts – It’s from State Pen.”

29 “There Is One Team Free from Holdouts – It’s from State Pen.”

30 “McDaniel vs. Warren in Saturday’s Contest,” Durant (Oklahoma) Daily Democrat, August 5, 1952: 4.

31 “Tommy Warren Receives Parole,” Durant Daily Democrat, February 24, 1953: 2.

32 Menary, 339.

33 WBUR interview.

34 WBUR interview.